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THE YOUTH OF GOETHE
BY P. HUME BROWN, LL.D., F.B.A.
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1913
TO
THE VISCOUNT HALDANE OF CLOAN, LORD CHANCELLOR OF GREAT BRITAIN.
MY DEAR CHANCELLOR,--AS THE "ONLY BEGETTER" OF THIS BOOK, IT SEEMS
ALMOST OBLIGATORY THAT IT SHOULD BE ASSOCIATED WITH YOUR NAME.
THE AUTHOR.
_GOETHE'S BIOGRAPHIE._
"Anfangs ist es ein Punkt der leise zum Kreise sich öffnet,
Aber, wachsend, umfasst dieser am Ende die Welt."
FRIEDRICH HEBBEL.
"In the beginning a point that soft to the circle expandeth,
But the circle at length, growing, enclaspeth the world."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS IN FRANKFORT
1749--1765
PAGE
GOETHE'S BIRTHPLACE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON HIM 1
PERIOD OF HIS BIRTH 4
HIS FATHER 6
HIS MOTHER 8
HIS SISTER 10
FAMILY FRIENDS 11
HIS EDUCATION 12
RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES 14
THE _SEVEN YEARS' WAR_ 18
FRENCH OCCUPATION OF FRANKFORT 19
GOETHE'S FIRST LOVE 21
DESTINED FOR THE STUDY OF LAW 23
THE BOY THE FATHER OF THE MAN 25
HIS CHARACTER AND EARLY TASTES 27
CHAPTER II
STUDENT IN LEIPZIG
OCTOBER, 1765--SEPTEMBER, 1768
GOES TO LEIPZIG 29
HIS WILD LIFE THERE 29
SOCIETY OF LEIPZIG 31
HIS IRREGULAR STUDIES 33
ADOPTS LEIPZIG FASHIONS 35
FEMININE INFLUENCES 36
DANDYISM 37
FALLS IN LOVE WITH KÄTHCHEN SCHÖNKOPF 38
FRIENDSHIP WITH BEHRISCH 39
HIS RELATIONS TO KÄTHCHEN 40
MISCELLANEOUS INTERESTS 44
FRIENDSHIP WITH OESER 46
STATE OF GERMAN LITERATURE 48
POEMS OF THE PERIOD 49
_DIE LAUNE DES VERLIEBTEN_ 51
_DIE MITSCHULDIGEN_ 52
INSPIRATION 54
CHAPTER III
AT HOME IN FRANKFORT
SEPTEMBER, 1768--APRIL, 1770
RETURNS TO FRANKFORT 57
HIS BROKEN HEALTH 58
RELATIONS TO HIS FATHER 58
HIS SISTER 60
INTEREST IN RELIGION 61
FRIENDSHIP WITH FRÄULEIN VON KLETTENBERG 62
A MYSTERIOUS MEDICINE 63
EVOLVES A RELIGIOUS CREED 65
INFLUENCE OF FRÄULEIN VON KLETTENBERG 66
INTEREST IN LITERATURE AND ART 67
LESSING AND WIELAND 70
RIPENING POWERS 71
CHAPTER IV
GOETHE IN STRASSBURG
APRIL, 1770--AUGUST, 1771
SETTLEMENT IN STRASSBURG 75
INFLUENCES OF STRASSBURG 75
CHANGE IN HIS RELIGIOUS FEELINGS 76
MANNER OF LIFE IN STRASSBURG 78
FRIENDSHIP WITH DR. SALZMANN 79
RELATIONS TO JUNG STILLING 83
COMES UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF HERDER 84
YOUNG'S _CONJECTURES ON ORIGINAL COMPOSITION_ 90
ITS INFLUENCE ON GOETHE'S GENIUS 93
FRIEDERIKE BRION 95
HIS RELATIONS TO HER 96
PARTING FROM HER 101
MISCELLANEOUS STUDIES 102
SELF-DISCIPLINE 103
POEMS ADDRESSED TO FRIEDERIKE 105
CHAPTER V
FRANKFORT--_GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN_
AUGUST, 1771--DECEMBER, 1771
GOETHE'S RETURN TO FRANKFORT 108
CREATIVE PRODUCTIVENESS OF THE PERIOD 108
POET OR ARTIST? 111
MENTAL CONFLICT 112
EPOCHS IN HIS LAST FRANKFORT YEARS 113
HIS SISTER CORNELIA 116
GROWING DISTASTE FOR FRANKFORT 117
DEPRESSION 119
WORSHIP OF SHAKESPEARE 120
_GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN_ 121
ITS INFLUENCE ON EUROPEAN LITERATURE 131
CHAPTER VI
INFLUENCE OF MERCK AND THE DARMSTADT CIRCLE
1772
FRIENDSHIP WITH MERCK 133
CHARACTER OF MERCK 133
HIS INFLUENCE ON GOETHE 135
THE DARMSTADT CIRCLE 136
ITS INFLUENCE ON GOETHE 136
CAROLINE FLACHSLAND AND GOETHE 137
POEMS OF GOETHE INSPIRED BY THE
DARMSTADT CIRCLE 138
_WANDERERS STURMLIED_ 139
_DER WANDERER_ 141
CHAPTER VII
WETZLAR AND CHARLOTTE BUFF
MAY--SEPTEMBER, 1772
DEPARTURE FROM WETZLAR 143
WETZLAR AND ITS SOCIETY 144
LOTTE BUFF 147
GOETHE'S RELATIONS TO HER 147
KESTNER, LOTTE'S BETROTHED 148
GOETHE, KESTNER, AND LOTTE 149
DEPARTURE FROM WETZLAR 150
KESTNER'S CHARACTERISATION OF GOETHE 151
CHAPTER VIII
AFTER WETZLAR
1772--1773
SUICIDE OF JERUSALEM 154
GOETHE VISITS THE FAMILY VON LA ROCHE 155
FRAU VON LA ROCHE 155
MAXIMILIANE VON LA ROCHE 157
UNREST 158
LETTERS TO KESTNER 159
ESTRANGEMENT FROM HIS FATHER 161
SOLITUDE 162
CHAPTER IX
SATIRICAL DRAMAS AND FRAGMENTS
POET OR ARTIST? 163
LITERARY ACTIVITY 164
_FRANKFURTER GELEHRTEN ANZEIGEN_ 165
_LETTER OF THE PASTOR_ 166
_TWO BIBLICAL QUESTIONS_ 167
RECASTS _GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN_ 167
SATIRICAL PLAYS 169
_PROMETHEUS_ 175
_MAHOMET_ 181
_ADLER UND TAUBE_ 183
_KÜNSTLERS ERDEWALLEN_ 184
CHAPTER X
_WERTHER_--_CLAVIGO_
1774
GOETHE'S NEED OF EXTERNAL STIMULUS 185
GOETHE AND THE BRENTANOS 186
ORIGIN OF _WERTHER_ 187
ENGLISH INFLUENCE ON _WERTHER_ 188
PUBLICATION OF _WERTHER_ 189
GOETHE AND WERTHER 190
SECOND PART OF _WERTHER_ 191
WERTHER AND GOETHE 193
INFLUENCE OF _WERTHER_ 196
THE KESTNERS AND _WERTHER_ 198
WERTHERISM 199
_CLAVIGO_ 200
DRAMATISED FROM BEAUMARCHAIS 200
ORIGIN OF _CLAVIGO_ 202
ITS PLOT 202
CONSTRUCTED ON CLASSICAL MODELS 205
_CLAVIGO_ AND GOETHE 206
CHAPTER XI
GOETHE AND SPINOZA--_DER EWIGE JUDE_
1773--1774
GOETHE'S DEBT TO SPINOZA 209
MISDATES SPINOZA'S INFLUENCE 210
_DER EWIGE JUDE_ 212
ORIGINAL PLAN OF IT 213
AS IT WAS ACTUALLY WRITTEN 216
ITS DIVISIONS 216
ITS CHARACTERISTICS 216
UNPUBLISHED TILL AFTER GOETHE'S DEATH 218
CHAPTER XII
GOETHE IN SOCIETY
1774
JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER 220
HIS CHARACTER 220
HIS INTEREST IN GOETHE 222
VISITS FRANKFORT 224
HIS INTERCOURSE WITH GOETHE 225
JOHANN BERNHARD BASEDOW 227
HIS CHARACTER AND CAREER 227
HIS VISIT TO FRANKFORT 228
GOETHE, LAVATER, AND BASEDOW AT EMS 228
THEIR VOYAGE DOWN THE RHINE 230
JUNG STILLING 231
SCENE AT ELBERFELDT 232
FRITZ JACOBI 233
GOETHE MAKES HIS ACQUAINTANCE 233
THEIR INTERCOURSE 234
JACOBI'S ESTIMATE OF GOETHE 237
KLOPSTOCK 238
GOETHE'S ADMIRATION OF HIM 238
THEIR MEETING IN FRANKFORT 239
_AN SCHWAGER KRONOS_ 240
BOIE AND WERTHES ON GOETHE 241
MAJOR VON KNEBEL AND GOETHE 242
GOETHE AND THE PRINCES OF WEIMAR 243
VON KNEBEL ON GOETHE 244
DEATH OF FRÄULEIN VON KLETTENBERG 245
CHAPTER XIII
LILI SCHÖNEMANN
1775
THE SCHÖNEMANN FAMILY 247
GOETHE'S INTRODUCTION TO LILI SCHÖNEMANN 248
HIS SUBSEQUENT MEMORY OF HER 249
LILI COMPARED WITH HIS PREVIOUS LOVES 250
GOETHE'S SONGS ADDRESSED TO HER 251
COUNTESS STOLBERG 253
GOETHE'S RELATIONS TO HER 253
_ERWIN UND ELMIRE_ 255
_STELLA_ 257
_CLAUDINE VON VILLA BELLA_ 263
A DISTRACTED LOVER 266
BETROTHED TO LILI 268
SHRINKS FROM MARRIAGE 269
COUNTS STOLBERG IN FRANKFORT 270
GOETHE STARTS WITH THEM FOR SWITZERLAND 271
VISITS HIS SISTER AT EMMENDINGEN 273
WITH LAVATER IN ZURICH 275
ACCOMPANIES PASSAVANT TO ST. GOTHARD 276
LYRICS TO LILI 276
RETURN TO FRANKFORT 278
CHAPTER XIV
LAST MONTHS IN FRANKFORT--THE _URFAUST_
1775
RELATIONS TO LILI ON HIS RETURN 279
A CRISIS IN THEIR RELATIONS 281
MISCELLANEOUS INTERESTS 282
ESTIMATES OF GOETHE BY SULZER AND ZIMMERMANN 283
INVITATION TO WEIMAR 284
PROPOSED JOURNEY TO ITALY 285
A DELAYED MESSENGER 286
DEPARTS FOR WEIMAR 287
_EGMONT_ AND THE _URFAUST_ 287
THE _URFAUST_ 288
CHARACTERISTICS 293
PREFACE
"Generally speaking," Goethe has himself said, "the most important
period in the life of an individual is that of his development--the
period which, in my case, breaks off with the detailed narrative of
_Dichtung und Wahrheit_." In reality, as we know, there is no complete
breach at any point in the lives of either nations or individuals. But
if in the life of Goethe we are to fix upon a dividing point, it is
his departure from Frankfort and his permanent settlement in Weimar in
his twenty-seventh year. Considered externally, that change of his
surroundings is the most obvious event in his career, and for the
world at large marks its division into two well-defined periods. In
relation to his inner development his removal from Frankfort to Weimar
may also be regarded as the most important fact in his life. From the
date of his settlement in Weimar he was subjected to influences which
equally affected his character and his genius; had he continued to
make his home in Frankfort, it is probable that, both as man and
literary artist, he would have developed characteristics essentially
different from those by which the world knows him. There were later
experiences--notably his Italian journey and his intercourse with
Schiller--which profoundly influenced him, but none of these
experiences penetrated his being so permanently as the atmosphere of
Weimar, which he daily breathed for more than half a century.
As Goethe himself has said, the first twenty-six years of his life are
essentially the period of his "development." During that period we see
him as he came from Nature's hand. His words, his actions have then a
stamp of spontaneity which they gradually lost with advancing years as
the result of his social and official relations in Weimar. He has told
us that it was one of the painful conditions of his position there
that it made impossible that frank and cordial relation with others
which it was his nature to seek, and from which he had previously
derived encouragement and stimulus; as a State official, he adds, he
could be on easy terms with nobody without running the risk of a
petition for some favour which he might or might not be able to
confer.
For the portrayal of the youthful Goethe materials are even
superabundant; of no other genius of the same order, indeed, have we a
record comparable in fulness of detail for the same period of life.
And it is this abundance of information and the extraordinary
individuality to whom it relates that give specific interest to any
study of Goethe's youth. From month to month, even at times from day
to day, we can trace the growth of his character, of his opinions, of
his genius. And the testimonies of his contemporaries are unanimous as
to the unique impression he made upon them. "He will always remain to
me one of the most extraordinary apparitions of my life," wrote one;
and he expressed the opinion of all who had the discernment to
appreciate originality of gifts and character. What they found unique
in him was inspiration, passion, a zest of life, at a pressure that
foreshadowed either a remarkable career or (at times his own dread)
disaster.
It was said of Goethe in his latest years that the world would come to
believe that there had been, not one, but many Goethes; and, as we
follow him through the various stages of his youth, we receive the
same impression. It results from this manifoldness of his nature that
he defies every attempt to formulate his characteristics at any period
of his life. In the present study of him the object has been to let
his own words and actions speak for themselves; any conclusions that
may be suggested, the reader will thus have it in his own power to
check.
After Goethe's own writings, the works to which I have been chiefly
indebted are _Goethes Gespräche, Gesamtausgabe von Freiherrn v.
Biedermann_, Leipzig, 1909-11 (5 vols.), in which are collected
references to Goethe by his contemporaries; and _Der junge Goethe:
Neue Ausgabe in sechs Bänden, besorgt von Max Morris_, Leipzig,
1910-12, containing the literary and artistic productions of Goethe
previous to his settlement in Weimar. The references throughout are to
the Weimar edition of Goethe's works. Except where otherwise
indicated, the author is responsible for the translations, both in
prose and verse.
I have cordially to express my gratitude to Dr. G. Schaaffs, Lecturer
in German in the University of St. Andrews, and to Mr. Frank C.
Nicholson, Librarian in the University of Edinburgh, for the trouble
they took in revising my proofs.
P.H.B.
Edinburgh.
THE YOUTH OF GOETHE
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS IN FRANKFORT
1749--1765
In his seventy-fifth year Goethe remarked to his secretary, Eckermann,
that he had always been regarded as one of fortune's chiefest
favourites, and he admitted the general truth of the impression,
though with significant reserves. "In truth," he added, "there has
been nothing but toil and trouble, and I can affirm that throughout my
seventy-five years I have not had a month's real freedom from
care."[1] Goethe's biographers are generally agreed that his good
fortune began with his birth, and that the circumstances of his
childhood and boyhood were eminently favourable for his future
development. Yet Goethe himself apparently did not, in his reserves,
make an exception even in favour of these early years; and, as we
shall see, we have other evidence from his own hand that these years
were not years of unmingled happiness and of entirely auspicious
augury.
[Footnote 1: _Gespräche mit Eckermann_, January 27th, 1824.]
In one circumstance, at least, Goethe appears to have considered
himself well treated by destiny. From the vivid and sympathetic
description he has given of his native city of Frankfort-on-the-Main
we may infer that he considered himself fortunate in the place of his
birth.[2] It is concurrent testimony that, at the date of Goethe's
birth, no German city could have offered greater advantages for the
early discipline of one who was to be Germany's national poet. Its
situation was central, standing as it did on the border line between
North and South Germany. No German city had a more impressive historic
past, the memorials of which were visible in imposing architectural
remains, in customs, and institutions. It was in Frankfort that for
generations the German Emperors had received their crowns; and the
spectacle of one of these ceremonies remained a vivid memory in
Goethe's mind throughout his long life. For the man Goethe the actual
present counted for more than the most venerable past;[3] and, as a
boy, he saw in Frankfort not only the reminders of former
generations, but the bustling activities of a modern society. The
spring and autumn fairs brought traders from all parts of Germany and
from the neighbouring countries; and ships from every part of the
globe deposited their miscellaneous cargoes on the banks of the river
Main. In the town itself there were sights fitted to stir youthful
imagination; and the surrounding country presented a prospect of
richness and variety in striking contrast to the tame environs of
Goethe's future home in Weimar. Dr. Arnold used to say that he knew
from his pupils' essays whether they had seen London or the sea,
because the sight of either of these objects seemed to suggest a new
measure of things. Frankfort, with its 30,000 inhabitants, with its
past memories and its bustling present, was at least on a sufficient
scale to suggest the conception of a great society developing its life
under modern conditions. For Goethe, who was to pass most of his days
in a town of some 7,000 inhabitants, and to whom no form of human
activity was indifferent, it was a fortunate destiny that he did not,
like Herder, pass his most receptive years in a petty village remote
from the movements of the great world.[4] In these years he was able
to accumulate a store of observations and experiences which laid a
solid foundation for all his future thinking.
[Footnote 2: In 1792, on the occasion of his being offered the honour
of _Rathsherr_ (town-councillor) in Frankfort, he wrote to his mother
that "it was an honour, not only in the eyes of Europe, but of the
whole world, to have been a citizen of Frankfort." (Goethe to his
mother, December 24th, 1792). So, in 1824, he told Bettina von Arnim
that, had he had the choice of his birthplace, he would have chosen
Frankfort. As we shall see, Goethe did not always speak so favourably
of Frankfort.]
[Footnote 3:
Die Abgeschiednen betracht' ich gern,
Stünd' ihr Verdienst auch noch so fern;
Doch mit den edlen lebendigen Neuen
Mag ich wetteifernd mich lieber freuen.]
[Footnote 4: In his later years Goethe preferred life in a small town.
"Zwar ist es meiner Natur gemäss, an einem kleinen Orte zu leben."
(Goethe to Zelter, December 16th, 1804.)]
If Goethe was fortunate in the place of his birth, was he equally
fortunate in its date (1749)? He has himself given the most explicit
of answers to the question. In a remarkable paper, written at the age
of forty-six, he has described the conditions under which he and his
contemporaries produced their works in the different departments of
literature. The paper had been called forth by a violent and coarse
attack, which he described as _literarischer Sansculottismus_, on the
writers of the period, and with a testiness unusual with him he took
up their defence. Under what conditions, he asks, do classical writers
appear? Only, he answers, when they are members of a great nation and
when great events are moving that nation at a period in its history
when a high state of culture has been reached by the body of its
people. Only then can the writer be adequately inspired and find to
his hand the materials requisite to the production of works of
permanent value. But, at the epoch when he and his contemporaries
entered on their career, none of these conditions existed. There was
no German nation, there was no standard of taste, no educated public
opinion, no recognised models for imitation; and in these
circumstances Goethe finds the explanation of the shortcomings of the
generation of writers to which he belonged.
On the truth of these conclusions Goethe's adventures as a literary
artist are the all-sufficient commentary. From first to last he was
in search of adequate literary forms and of worthy subjects; and, as
he himself admits, he not unfrequently went astray in the quest. On
his own word, therefore, we may take it that under other conditions he
might have produced more perfect works than he has actually given us.
Yet the world has had its compensations from those hampering
conditions under which his creative powers were exercised. In the very
attempt to grope his way to the most expressive forms of artistic
presentation all the resources of his mind found their fullest play.
It is in the variety of his literary product, unparalleled in the case
of any other poet, that lies its inexhaustible interest; between _Götz
von Berlichingen_ and the Second Part of _Faust_ what a range of
themes and forms does he present for his readers' appreciation! And to
the anarchy of taste and judgment that prevailed when Goethe began his
literary career we in great measure owe another product of his
manifold activities. He has been denied a place in the very first rank
of poets, but by the best judges he is regarded as the greatest master
of literary and artistic criticism. But, had he found fixed and
acknowledged standards in German national literature and art, there
would have been less occasion for his searching scrutiny of the
principles which determine all art and literature. As it was, he was
led from the first to direct his thoughts to the consideration of
these principles; and the result is a body of reflections, marking
every stage of his own development, on life, literature, and art,
which, in the opinion of critics like Edmond Scherer and Matthew
Arnold, gave him his highest claim to the consideration of posterity.
As human lot goes, Goethe was fortunate in his home and his home
relations, though in the case of both there were disadvantages which
left their mark on him throughout his later life. He was born in the
middle-class, the position which, according to Schiller, is most
favourable for viewing mankind as a whole, and, therefore,
advantageous for a poet who, like Goethe, was open to universal
impressions. Though his maternal grandfather was chief magistrate of
Frankfort, and his father was an Imperial Councillor, the family did
not belong to the _élite_ of the city; Goethe, brilliant youth of
genius though he was, was not regarded as an eligible match for the
daughter of a Frankfort banker. It was the father who was the
dominating figure in the home life of the family; and the relations
between father and son emphasise the fact that the early influences
under which the son grew up left something to be desired. Their
permanent mutual attitude was misunderstanding, resulting from
imperfect sympathy. "If"--so wrote Goethe in his sixty-fourth year
regarding his father and himself--"if, on his part as well as on the
son's, a suggestion of mutual understanding had entered into our
relationship, much might have been spared to us both. But that was not
to be!" It is with dutiful respect but with no touch of filial
affection that Goethe has drawn his father's portrait in _Dichtung und
Wahrheit_. As the father is there depicted, he is the embodiment of
Goethe's own definition of a Philistine--one naturally incapable of
entering into the views of other people.[5] Yet Goethe might have had
a worse parent; for, according to his lights, the father spared no
pains to make his son an ornament of his generation. Strictly
conscientious, methodical, with a genuine love of art and letters, he
did his best to furnish his son with every accomplishment requisite to
distinction in the walk of life for which he destined him--the
profession of law, in which he had himself failed through the defects
of his temperament. Directly and indirectly, he himself took in hand
his son's instruction, but without appreciation or consideration of
the affinities of a mind with precociously developed instincts. The
natural result of the father's pedantic solicitude was that his son
came to see in him the schoolmaster rather than the parent. Knowledge
in abundance was conveyed, but of the moulding influence of parental
sympathy there was none. What dubious consequences followed from these
relations of father and son we shall afterwards see.
[Footnote 5: To Chancellor von Müller Goethe said: "Mein Vater war ein
tüchtiger Mann, aber freilich fehlte ihm Gewandtheit und Beweglichkeit
des Geistes."]
Goethe's mother has found a place in German hearts which is partly due
to the portrait which her son has drawn of her, but still more to the
impression conveyed by her own recorded sayings and correspondence.
Goethe's tone, when he speaks of his father, is always cool and
critical; of his mother, on the other hand, he speaks with the
feelings of a grateful son, conscious of the deep debt he owed to
her.[6] His relations to her in his later years have exposed him to
severe animadversion, but their mutual relations in these early years
present the most attractive chapter in the record of his private life.
Married at the age of seventeen to a husband approaching forty, the
mother, as she herself said, stood rather as an elder sister than as a
parent to her children. And her own character made this relation a
natural one. An overflowing vitality, a lively and never-failing
interest in all the details of daily life, and a temperament
responsive to every call, kept her perennially young, and fitted her
to be the companion of her children rather than the sober helpmate of
such a husband as Herr Goethe.[7] How, by her faculty of
story-telling, she ministered to the side of her son's nature which he
had inherited from herself Goethe has related with grateful
appreciation. But he owed her a larger debt. It was her spirit
pervading the household that brought such happiness into his early
home life as fell to his lot. A commonplace mother and a prosaic
father would have created an atmosphere which, in the case of a child
with Goethe's impressionable nature, would permanently have affected
his outlook on life. For the future poet, the mother was the admirable
nurse; she fed his fancy with her own; she taught him the art of
making the most of life--a lesson which he never forgot; and she gave
him her own sane and cheerful view of the uncontrollable element in
human destiny. For the future man, however, we may doubt whether she
was the best of mothers. Her education was meagre--a defect which her
conscientious husband did his best to amend; and all her
characteristics were fitted rather to evoke affection than to inspire
respect. Though her son always speaks of her with tender regard, his
tone is that of an elder brother to a sister rather than of a son to a
parent. She was herself conscious of her incompetence to discharge all
the responsibilities of a mother which the character of the father
made specially onerous. "We were young together," she said of herself
and her son, and she confessed frankly that "she could educate no
child." Thus between an unsympathetic father and a mother incapable of
influencing the deeper springs of character, Goethe passed through
childhood and boyhood without the discipline of temper and will which
only the home can give. And the lack of this discipline is traceable
in all his actions till he had reached middle life. Wayward and
impulsive by nature, he yielded to every motive, whether prompted by
the intellect or the heart, with an abandonment which struck his
friends as the leading trait of his character. "Goethe," wrote one of
them, "only follows his last notion, without troubling himself as to
consequences," and of himself, when he was past his thirtieth year, he
said that he was "as much a child as ever."
[Footnote 6: Writing to her grandchild, Goethe's mother says: "Dein
lieber Vater hat mir nie Kummer oder Verdruss verursacht."]
[Footnote 7: When the son of Frau von Stein was about to visit her,
Goethe wrote: "Da sie nicht so ernsthaft ist wie ich, so wirst du dich
besser bei ihr befinden."]
There was another member of the family of whom Goethe speaks with even
warmer feeling than of his mother. This was his sister Cornelia, a
year younger than himself, and destined to an unhappy marriage and an
early death. Of the many portraits he has drawn in his Autobiography,
none is touched with a tenderer hand and with subtler sympathy than
that of Cornelia. Goethe does not imply that she permanently
influenced his future development; for such influence she possessed
neither the force of mind nor of character.[8] But to her even more
than to the mother he came to owe such home happiness as he enjoyed in
the hours of freedom from the father's pedagogic discipline. She was
his companion alike in his daily school tasks and his self-sought
pleasures--the confidant and sharer of all his boyish troubles. To no
other person throughout his long life did Goethe ever stand in
relations which give such a favourable impression of his heart as his
relation with Cornelia. The memory of her was the dearest which he
retained of his early days; and the words in which he recalls her in
his old age prove that she was an abiding memory to the end.
[Footnote 8: Goethe's letters addressed to Cornelia from Leipzig, when
he was in his eighteenth year, are in the tone at once of an
affectionate brother and of a schoolmaster. Their subsequent relations
to each other will appear in the sequel.]
It was an advantage on which Goethe lays special stress that, outside
his somewhat cramping home circle, he had a more or less intimate
acquaintance with a number of persons, who by their different
characters and accomplishments made lasting impressions on his
youthful mind. The impressions must have been deep, since, writing in
advanced age, he describes their personal appearance and their
different idiosyncrasies with a minuteness which is at the same time a
remarkable testimony to his precocious powers of observation. What is
interesting in these intimacies as throwing light on Goethe's early
characteristics is, that all these persons were of mature age, and all
of them more or less eccentric in their habits and ways of thinking.
"Even in God I discover defects," was the remark of one of them to his
youthful listener--to whom he had been communicating his views on the
world in general. In the company of these elders, with such or kindred
opinions, Goethe was early familiarised with the variability of human
judgments on fundamental questions. And he laid the experience to
heart, for on no point in the conduct of life does he insist with
greater emphasis than the folly of expecting others to think as
ourselves.
The method of Goethe's education was not such as to compensate for the
lack of moral discipline which has already been noted. With the
exception of a brief interval, he received instruction at home, either
directly from his father or from tutors under his superintendence.
Thus he missed both the steady drill of school life and the influence
of companions of his own age which might have made him more of a boy
and less of a premature man.[9] It is Goethe's own expressed opinion
that the object of education should be to foster tastes rather than to
communicate knowledge. In this object, at least, his own education was
perfectly successful; for the tastes which he acquired under his
father's roof remained with him to the end. What strikes us in his
course of study is its desultoriness and its comprehensiveness. At one
time and another he gained an acquaintance with English, French,
Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. He read widely in history, secular
and sacred, and in the later stage of his early studies he took up law
at the express desire of his father. It was the aim of his father's
scheme of education that accomplishments should form an essential part
of it. So his son was taught music, drawing, dancing, riding, and
fencing. But there was another side to Goethe's early training which,
in his case, deserves to be specially emphasised. A striking
characteristic of Goethe's writings is the knowledge they display of
the whole range of the manual arts, and this knowledge he owed to the
circumstances of his home. His father, a virtuoso with the means of
gratifying his tastes, freely employed artists of all kinds to execute
designs of his own conception; and, as part of his son's education,
entrusted him with the superintendence of his commissions. Thus, in
accordance with modern ideas, were combined in Goethe's training the
practical and the theoretical--a combination which is the
distinguishing characteristic of his productive activity. Generally
considered, we see that the course of his studies was such as in any
circumstances he would himself have probably followed. Under no
conditions would Goethe have been content to restrict himself to a
narrow field of study and to give the necessary application for its
complete mastery. As it was, the multiplicity of his studies supplied
the foundation for the manifold productivity of his maturer years. In
no branch of knowledge was he ever a complete master; he devoted a
large part of his life to the study of Greek and Roman antiquity, yet
he never acquired a scholar's knowledge either of Greek or Roman
literature.[10] If on these subjects he has contributed many valuable
reflections, it was due to the insight of genius which apprehends what
passes the range of ordinary vision.
[Footnote 9: It was doubtless due to the absence of strict drill in
his youth that Goethe, as he himself tells us, never acquired the art
of punctuating his own writings.]
[Footnote 10: Goethe said of himself that he had no "grammatical
vein."]
A striking fact in Goethe's account of his early years is the emphasis
he lays on the religious side of his education. Judging from the
length at which he treats the subject, indeed, we are bound to assume
that in his own estimation religion was the most important element in
his early training, and in the case of one who came eventually to be
known as the "great Pagan" the fact is remarkable. Had he sat down to
write the narrative of these years at an earlier period of his
life--after his return, say, from his Italian journey--we may conceive
that in his then anti-Christian spirit he would have put these early
religious experiences in a somewhat different light, and would hardly
have assigned to them the same importance. But when he actually
addressed himself to tell the story of his development, he had passed
out of his anti-Christian phase, and was fully convinced of the
importance of religion in human culture. Regarding this portion of his
Autobiography, as regarding others, we may have our doubts as to how
far his record is coloured by his opinions when he wrote it. Yet,
after every reserve, there can be no question that religion engaged
both his intellect and his emotions as a boy; and the fact is
conclusive that religious instincts were not left out of his
nature.[11]
[Footnote 11: With reference to what he says of his Biblical studies
he wrote as follows to a correspondent (January 30th, 1812)
[Transcriber's Note: corrected error "1912"]: "Dass Sie meine
asiatischen Weltanfänge so freundlich aufnehmen, ist mir von grossem
Wert. Es schlingt sich die daher für mich gewonnene Kultur durch mein
ganzes Leben...."]
There was nothing in the influence of his home that was specially
fitted to awaken religious feeling or to occasion abnormal spiritual
experiences. In religion as in everything else the father was a
formalist, and such religious views as he held were those of the
_Aufklärung_, for which all forms of spiritual emotion were the folly
of unreason. Religion was a permanent and sustaining influence in the
life of Goethe's mother, but her religion consisted simply in a
cheerful acquiescence in the decrees of Providence. Of the soul's
trials and sorrows, as they are recorded in the annals of the
religious life, her nature was incapable, and she was always perfectly
at ease in Zion. By his mother, therefore, the son could not be deeply
moved to concern regarding his spiritual welfare, nor to make religion
the all-engrossing subject of his thoughts and affections. There was
one friend of the family, indeed, the Fräulein von Klettenberg (the
_Schöne Seele_ of _Wilhelm Meister_), in whom Goethe saw the exemplar
of the religious life in its more ecstatic manifestations, but her
special influence on him belongs to a later date. In accordance with
the family rule he regularly attended church, but the homilies to
which he listened were not of a nature to quicken his religious
feelings, while the doctrinal instruction he received at home he has
himself described as "nothing but a dry kind of morality." Against one
article of the creed taught him--the doctrine of original and
inherited sin--all his instincts rebelled; and the antipathy was so
compact with all his later thinking that we may readily believe that
it manifested itself thus early. If we may accept his own account of
his youthful religious experiences, he was already on the way to that
_Ur-religion_, which was his maturest profession of faith, and which
he held to be the faith of select minds in all stages of human
history. Now, as at all periods of his life, it was the beneficent
powers in nature that most deeply impressed him, and he records how in
crude childish fashion he secretly reared an altar to these powers,
though an unlucky accident in the oblation prevented him from
repeating his act of worship.
Like other children, he was quick to see the inconsistency of the
creed he was taught with the actual facts of experience. One event in
his childhood, the earthquake of Lisbon, especially struck him as a
confounding commentary on the accepted belief in the goodness of God;
and the impression was deepened when in the following summer a violent
thunder-storm played havoc with some of the most treasured books in
his father's library. In all his soul's troubles, however, Goethe,
according to his own account, found refuge in a world where
questionings of the ways of Providence had never found an entrance. In
the Old Testament, and specially in the Book of Genesis, with its
picture of patriarchal life, he found a world which by engaging his
feelings and imagination worked with tranquilising effect (_stille
Wirkung_) on his spirit, distracted by his miscellaneous studies and
his varied interests. Of all the elements that entered into his early
culture, indeed, Goethe gives the first place to the Bible. "To it,
almost alone," he expressly says, "did I owe my moral education." To
the Bible as an incomparable presentment of the national life and
development of a people, and the most precious of possessions for
human culture, Goethe bore undeviating testimony at every period of
his life. It need hardly be said that his attitude towards the Bible
was divided by an impassable gulf from the attitude of traditional
Christianity. For Goethe it was a purely human production, the
fortunate birth of a time and a race which in the nature of things can
never be paralleled. What the Churches have found in it was not for
him its inherent virtue. Even in his youth it was in its picturesque
presentation of a primitive life that he found what satisfied the
needs of his nature. The spiritual aspirations of the Psalms, the
moral indignation of the prophets, found no response in him either in
youth or manhood. His ideal of life was never that of the saints, but
it was an ideal, as his record of his early religious experience
shows, which had its roots in the nature which had been allotted him.
To certain events in his early life Goethe assigned a decisive
influence on his future development. To the gift of a set of puppets
by his grandmother he attributes his first awakened interest in the
drama; and the extraordinary detail with which Wilhelm Meister
describes his youthful absorption in the play of his puppets proves
that in his Autobiography Goethe does not lay undue stress on the
significance of the gift. To another event which occurred when he was
entering his seventh year, he ascribes the origin of an attitude of
mind which in his own opinion he did not overcome till his later
years. In 1756 broke out the Seven Years' War, in the course of which
there was a cleavage in German public opinion that disturbed the peace
of families and set the nearest relatives at bitter feud. Such was the
case in the Goethe circle--the father passionately sympathising with
Frederick; the maternal grandfather, Textor, the chief magistrate of
Frankfort, as passionately taking the side of Maria Theresa. In this
case the son's sympathies were those of his father, and in boyish
fashion he made a hero of the king of Prussia, though, as he himself
is careful to tell us, Prussia and its interests were nothing to him.
It was to the pain he felt when his hero was defamed by the supporters
of Austria that he traced that contempt of public opinion which he
notes as a characteristic of the greater part of his manhood, yet we
may doubt if any external event was needed to develop in him this
special turn of mind. As his whole manner of thinking proves, it was
neither in his character nor his genius to make a popular appeal like
a Burns or a Schiller.[12] In his old age Goethe said of himself that
he was conscious of an innate feeling of aristocracy which made him
regard himself as the peer of princes; and we need no further
explanation of his contempt of public opinion. Yet if the worship of
heroes has the moulding influence which Carlyle ascribed to it, in
Goethe's youthful admiration of Frederick this influence could not be
wanting. To the end Frederick appeared to him one of those "demonic"
personalities, who from time to time cross the world's stage, and
whose action is as incalculable as the phenomena of the natural world.
"When such an one passes to his rest, how gladly would we be silent,"
were his memorable words when the news of Frederick's death reached
him during his Italian travels, and the remark proves how deeply and
permanently Frederick's career had impressed him.
[Footnote 12: His remark to Eckermann (1828) is well known: "Meine
Sachen können nicht populär werden; wer daran denkt und dafür strebt,
ist in einem Irrthum."]
More easily realised is the direct influence on Goethe's youthful
development of another event of his boyhood. As a result of the Seven
Years' War, 7,000 French troops took possession of Frankfort in the
beginning of 1759, and occupied it for more than three years. In the
ways of a foreign soldiery at free quarters the Frankforters saw a
strange contrast to their own decorous habits of life, but the French
occupation was brought more directly home to the Goethe household. To
the disgust and indignation of the father, to whom as a worshipper of
Frederick the French were objects of detestation, their chief officer,
Count Thoranc, quartered in his own house. Goethe has told in detail
the history of this invasion of the quiet household--the never-failing
courtesy and considerateness of Thoranc, the abiding ill-humour of the
father, the reconciling offices of the mother, exercised in vain to
effect a mutual understanding between her husband and his unwelcome
guest. As for Goethe himself, devoted to Frederick though he was, the
presence of the French introduced him to a new world into which he
entered with boyish delight. With the insatiable curiosity which was
his characteristic throughout life, he threw himself into the
pleasures and avocations of the novel society. Thoranc was a
connoisseur in art, and gave frequent commissions to the artists of
the town; and Goethe, already interested in art through his father's
collections, found his opportunity in these tastes of Thoranc, who was
struck by the boy's precocity and even took hints from his
suggestions.
A theatre set up by the French was another source of pleasure and
stimulus. The sight of the pieces that were acted prompted him to
compose pieces of his own and led him to the study of the French
classical drama. In the _coulisses_, to which he was admitted by
special favour, he observed the ways of actors--an experience which
supplied the materials for the portraiture of the actor's life in
_Wilhelm Meister_. A remark which he makes in connection with the
French theatre is a significant commentary on his respective relations
to his father and mother, and indicates the atmosphere of evasion
which permanently pervaded the household. It was against the will of
his father, but with the connivance of his mother, that he paid his
visits to the theatre and cultivated the society of the actors, and it
was only by the consideration that his son's knowledge of French was
thus improved that the practical father was reconciled to the
delinquency. The direct results of his intercourse with the French
soldiery on Goethe's development were at once abiding and of high
importance. It extended his knowledge of men and the world, and, more
specifically, it gave him that interest in French culture and that
insight into the French mind which he possessed in a degree beyond any
of his contemporaries.
But the most notable experience of these early years under his
father's roof still remains to be mentioned. When he was in his
fourteenth year, Goethe fell in love--the first of the many similar
experiences which were to form the successive crises of his future
life. There can be little doubt that in his narrative of this his
first love there is to the full as much "poetry" as "truth"; but there
also can be as little doubt that all the circumstances attending it
made his first love a turning-point in his life. It is a peculiarity
of all Goethe's love adventures that between him and the successive
objects of his affections there was always some bar which made a
regular union impossible or undesirable. So it was in the case of the
girl whom he calls Gretchen, and of whom we know nothing except what
he chose to tell us. He made her acquaintance through his association
with a set of youths of questionable character whom we are surprised
to find as the chosen companions of the son of an Imperial Councillor.
Of all Goethe's loves this was the one that was accompanied by the
least pleasant complications and the most painful of disillusions.
Through his intercourse with Gretchen's intimates he was led to
recommend one of them for a municipal post in Frankfort--a post which
he did not hold long before he was found guilty of embezzlement and
defalcation. The discovery was disastrous to Goethe's relations with
Gretchen, and the disaster involved an experience of conflicting
emotions which produced a crisis in his inner life. He had been rudely
awakened to mistrust of mankind, and it was an awakening which, as he
has himself emphasised, influenced all his thinking and feeling for
many years to come. He had lived in a dream of phantasy and passion,
and he learned to the shock of his whole nature that the object of his
dreams had never at any moment regarded him otherwise than as an
interesting boy whose talents and connections made him a desirable
acquaintance. In the strained and morbid condition of his body and
mind, which was the result of his disillusion, we see an experience
which was often to be repeated in his maturer years, and which points
to elements in his nature which were ever ready to pass beyond his
control. As in the case of all his subsequent experiences of the same
nature, he finally regained self-mastery, but a revolution had been
accomplished in him as the result of the struggle. His boyhood was at
an end, and it is with the consciousness of awakened manhood that he
now looks out upon life. More than once in his future career a similar
transformation was to be repeated--a great passion followed by a new
direction of his activities, involving a saving breach with the past.
Goethe's father had determined from the beginning that his only son
should follow the profession of law, in which, as we have seen, he had
himself failed owing to his peculiarities of mind and temper. In this
determination there was no consideration of the predilections of his
son, and in this fact lay the permanent cause of their estrangement.
The father's choice of a university for his son was another
illustration of their divergent sympathies and interests. Left to his
own choice, the son would have preferred the university of Göttingen
as his place of study, but his father ruled that Leipzig, his own
university, was the proper school for the future civilian. In
connection with his departure for Leipzig Goethe makes two confessions
which are a striking commentary on the conditions of his home life in
Frankfort. He left Frankfort, he tells us, with joy as intense as that
of a prisoner who has broken through his gaol window, and finds
himself a free man. And this repugnance to his native city, as a place
where he could not expand freely, remained an abiding feeling with
him. The burgher life of Frankfort, he wrote to his mother during his
first years at Weimar, was intolerable to him, and to have made his
permanent home there would have been fatal to the fulfilment of every
ideal that gave life its value. His other confession is a still more
significant illustration of the vital lack of sympathy between father
and son. He left Frankfort, he says, with the deliberate intention of
following his own predilections and of disregarding the express wish
of his father that he should apply himself specifically to the study
of law. Only his sister Cornelia was made the confidant of his secret
intention, and apparently no attempt was made to effect even a
compromise between the aims of the father and those of the son. Plain
and direct dealing was a marked characteristic of Goethe at every
period of his life; that he should thus have deceived his father in a
matter that lay nearest his heart is therefore the final proof that
father and son were separated by a gulf which could not be bridged. As
it was, in the course of life which Goethe was to follow in Leipzig we
may detect a certain defiant heedlessness which points to an uneasy
consciousness of duty ignored.
We have it on Goethe's own word that with his departure for Leipzig
begins that self-directed development which he was to pursue with the
undeviating purpose and the wonderful result which make him the unique
figure he is in the history of the human spirit. What, we may inquire,
as he is now at the commencement of this career unparalleled, so far
as our knowledge goes, in the case of any other of the world's
greatest spirits--what were the specific characteristics, visible in
him from the first, which gave the pledge and promise of this
astonishing career? In his case, we can say with certainty, was fully
verified the adage, that the boy is father of the man. Alike in
internal and external traits we note in him as a boy characteristics
which were equally marked in the mature man. In his demeanour, he
himself tells us, there was a certain stiff dignity which excited the
ridicule of his companions. It was in his nature even as a boy, he
also tells us, to assume airs of command: one of his own acquaintance
and of his own years said of him, "We were all his lacqueys." Here we
have in anticipation the aged Goethe whose Jove-like presence put
Heine out of countenance; the god "cold, monosyllabic," of Jean Paul.
But behind the stiff demeanour, in youth as in age, there was the
mercurial temperament, the _etwas unendlich Rührendes_, which made him
a problem at all periods of his life even to those who knew him most
intimately. He has himself noted his youthful reputation for
eccentricity, "his lively, impetuous, and excitable temper"; and this
was the side of him that most impressed his associates till he was
past middle age. In boyhood, also, as even in his latest years, he was
subject to bursts of violence in which he lost all self-control. When
attacked by three of his schoolmates, he fell upon them with the fury
of a wild beast, and mastered all three. On the loss of Gretchen he
"wept and raved," and, as the result of his morbid sensibility, his
constitution, always abnormally influenced by his emotions, was
seriously impaired. Here we have the _Weiblichkeit_, the feminine
strain in his nature, which was noted by Schiller, and which explains
the shrinking from all forms of pain which he inherited from his
mother.
More than once these emotional elements in his nature were to bring
him near to moral shipwreck, and it was doubtless the consciousness of
such a possibility in his own case that explains his haunting interest
in the character and career of Byron. But underneath his "chameleon"
temperament (the expression is his own[13]) there was a solid
foundation, the lack of which was the ruin of Byron. Goethe has
himself told us what this saving element in him was. It was a
strenuousness and seriousness implanted in him by nature (_von der
Natur in mich gelegter Ernst_), which, he says, "exerted its influence
[on him] at an early age, and showed itself more distinctly in after
years." This side of his complex nature did not escape the notice even
of his youthful contemporaries. "Goethe," wrote one of them from
Leipzig, "is as great a philosopher as ever." Here again we see in the
boy the father of the man. Increasingly, as the years went on, his
innate tendency to reflection asserted itself, till at length in his
latest period it so completely dominated him that the sage proved too
much for the artist.
[Footnote 13: So Weislingen (in _Götz von Berlichingen_), whom Goethe
meant to be a double of himself, says: "_Ich bin ein Chamaeleon_."]
If the character of the boy foreshadowed that of the man, so did the
tendencies of his genius the lines they were afterwards to follow.
"Turn a man whither he will," he remarks in his Autobiography, "he
will always return to the path marked out for him by nature," and his
own development signally illustrates the truth of the remark. From his
earliest youth, he tells us, he had "a passion for investigating
natural things"; and towards middle life his interest in physical
science became so absorbing as for many years to stifle his creative
faculty. But in the retrospect of his life as a whole he had no doubt
as to the supreme bent of his genius. The "laurel crown of the poet"
was the goal of his youthful ambition, and the last bequest he made to
posterity was the Second Part of _Faust_. Among the miscellaneous
intellectual interests of his boyhood poetry evidently held the chief
place, and, partly out of his own inspiration and partly at the
suggestion of others, he diligently tried his hand at different forms
of poetical composition. Yet, if we may judge from his most notable
boyish piece--_Poetische Gedanken über die Höllenfahrt Jesu
Christi_--there have been more "timely-happy spirits" than Goethe.
Not, indeed, as we shall see, till his twentieth year, the age when,
according to Kant, the lyric poet is in fullest possession of his
genius, does his verse attain the distinctiveness of original creative
power.[14]
[Footnote 14: All Goethe's boyish productions that have been preserved
will be found in _Der junge Goethe, Neue Ausgabe in sechs Bänden
besorgt von Max Morris_, Leipzig, 1909.]